Welcome to
"Are You Seeing What I'm Seeing?"
A Galvanizing Art Challenge​

Prior to the pandemic that began in 2020 and swept aside fun and good times, a coterie of the like-minded bumped heads and came up with the idea for “Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking?” which entailed creating a work of art (mostly paintings) based solely on a title that emerged from a cracked-open fortune cookie.

 

The roughly 45 artists who participated created a wide range of wildly imaginative work, leaving in the dust traditional subjects or interpretations, with the result that the ensuing exhibitions — and there were three of them, in three different venues — were a resounding success.

 

We could easily have kept traveling that road, and perhaps one day will do so yet again, but now, with “Are You Seeing What I’m Seeing?” we’ve rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic, so to speak, and this time out each artist has chosen a very short description, of a somewhat unusual bent, and has undertaken to visually reproduce their interpretation of it. The descriptions can be viewed as prompts or likened to stage directions in a play where improvisation is the soupe du jour.

 

And then each artist has capped it all off with a title of their own choice, which may complement or contradict the work of art itself, depending on which side of the mattress they rolled out of earlier that morning.

 

As I write, the results are creeping in, and once again we have eternal proof that the creative mind can be as boundless as the universe on a starry night.

 

Enjoy these works… and we’ll be posting more of them as we come closer to the opening of “Are You Seeing What I’m Seeing?” at the Manhattan Beach Art Center on January 16, 2026. It’s scheduled for a two-and-a-half month run, until March 29 — which means you can go back again and again, each time with lots of friends, art lovers and collectors.